Microsoft beats Wall Street expectations with $90B in revenue
[July 30, 2026] By
KAITLYN HUAMANI
Microsoft posted strong results for its quarterly earnings on Wednesday,
beating expectations and showing strong growth in its cloud computing
platform and a boost in paid AI users.
The Redmond, Washington, company earned $90 billion, or $4.81 per share,
in the April-June quarter. That is up 18% from the same period a year
earlier. Analysts surveyed by FactSet Research had expected the company
to earn $4.24 per share on revenue of $87.62 billion this quarter.
Microsoft Cloud revenue was $59.3 billion this quarter, up 27%
year-over-year. That growth reflects the demand across Microsoft's cloud
computing platform Azure, as well as its first-party AI applications and
services. Azure and other cloud services revenue increased 43%.
For the full fiscal year, which closed out at the end of June, the
company brought in $331.8 billion in revenue.
“This year, Azure revenue surpassed $100 billion for the first time, and
Microsoft 365 Copilot reached over 30 million paid seats, reflecting the
confidence customers are placing in us to power their AI
transformation,” CEO Satya Nadella said in a statement Wednesday.
The concurrent Azure and Copilot growth indicate that Microsoft is
“winning on both fronts,” Michael J. Wolf, founder and CEO of Activate
Consulting said in a statement. Microsoft is doing so by “supplying the
cloud infrastructure for enterprise AI while monetizing the AI tools
embedded in the products workers use every day.”
Investors had been looking for evidence that Azure and Copilot,
Microsoft's flagship AI assistant, could eventually produce returns as
concerns about high AI spending have steadily grown across the industry.
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 Chief financial officer Amy Hood
told investors on a call that the company’s capital expenditures and
investment expectations remain unchanged for the 2026 calendar year.
An accounting change will bring that guidance closer to
approximately $175 billion, Hood said, but in practice, the
expectations remain “unchanged.” This move marks a break from
competitors that have been steadily increasing their spending
forecasts.
Hood said earlier this year that the company expects to invest $190
billion in capital expenditures in 2026, a figure that includes
approximately $25 billion from the impact of higher component
pricing. Microsoft's capital expenditures were $41 billion this
quarter.
Bryan Hayes, an investment strategist at Zacks Investment Research,
said in a statement that “for the first time in three quarters, the
market appears willing to grant that the spending is buying
something real.”
“We remain very confident in the long-term return on these
investments, given these strong demand signals, the increasing
product usage we’ve seen and the efficiencies that we’re driving
across the platform,” said Danielle Criste, Microsoft's director of
investor relations, in an interview.
Microsoft’s shares rose about 9% to $426.03 in after-hours trading.
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